A lockbox with a combination padlock that opened to reveal Daisy’s passport, a photo of Daisy and her parents taken on her second birthday, a watch whose battery needed replacing, and her bag of Zoise cookies. Cyan belts were given only three cookies, but with the state Susan was in, she’d need all of them. Taking the tin out, she popped Gordon back where he belonged and returned to the kitchen.

If Daisy wanted more, she’d just have to work hard to make it up to magenta belt.

Daisy had been gone forever. Of this, Susan was convinced. How else could she have had the time to descale the kettle, clean inside every cupboard, put everything back, and itemize the contents alphabetically? Esther wasn’t helping. All she kept doing was following Susan and taking everything she put in the cupboards back out and muttering that no one would be able to find anything.

“Susan?” Daisy shimmered in and out of focus, as substantial as a mirage. “Why don’t you take the gloves off and come with me?”

“What gloves?” Susan stared down at her hands and watched as Daisy held her wrists still and Esther appeared to peel off a layer of jaundiced skin to reveal neonatally pink fingers.

“Come on now . . .”

Susan buzzed along the corridor and back into her room, where Esther folded her into a seated position on the bed and Daisy handed her a plate with a cookie on it and a cup of warmed milk.

“No one can sleep when they’re hungry.”

Susan couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten. She now functioned on a plane beyond the physical. She was a wormhole.

“Eat the cookie, Susan.”

When Daisy returned from the library, something very strange happened.

Susan Ptolemy hugged her.

It was like being slowly consumed by an affectionate steamroller, and Daisy wasn’t sure whether she would survive.

“I slept for two days straight, Daisy Wooton, and I love you.”

“Could you maybe let go of me?”

Susan released her, and air rushed to fill the vacuum in Daisy’s lungs. She found it hard to believe this was the same person she’d seen in the kitchen at three A.M. the other night. Susan’s hair was glossy, her eyes bright, and her skin shone with something other than the sheen of sweat that emerged when she was forced to walk at the same pace as her friends. She looked so like a freshly groomed spaniel that it was tempting to pat her on the head.

Daisy resisted.

“Didn’t you have lectures to go to? Cadavers to dissect?”

Susan flapped it all away. “Kully took notes. And the only other thing was a session at the medical center yesterday afternoon, but I’ve already e-mailed an elaborate yet plausible reason for missing that one.”